VLA New Mexico

Software I use every day at the gallery

Richard Charpentier Macintosh, Notes from Rich, Photography, Tech Tips Leave a Comment

This is one of those, “I’ve been meaning to post this” type of a post.  I’ve been asked about software often, and specifically what I’m using at the gallery.  So, today I thought I’d share!

  1. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom2:  Lightroom is my “everything” when it comes to image work.  Seriously.  I’ve got several Lightroom Catalogs.  My personal work from 08′, my new work from 09′, my client files from 08′ and 09 (they don’t bring as many images, only their good ones), etc.  I’m sure more catalogs will pop up over the course of this year.  Lightroom is an amazing management tool.  On top of that it’s also a fantastic quickie development tool, and it is my favorite print management tool.  That’s right, all of my printing work comes out of Lightroom.  Want to make tripticks, quad prints, reformat for strange customer requests?  Yeah, I deal with all of that in Lightroom.
  2. Photomatix:  My #2 imaging program.  You know, HDRs?  Yeah, there is where they’re born.  Well, they’re actually planned while shooting, but I can only see the result when I process the images in Photomatix.  Great tool!
  3. Photoshop:  Yeah, Photoshop is my #3 program.  It gets broken out when I really need to correct something, I want to make cool multi-layered images, or when I have to make post cards and advertisements for other folks.  Oh, and I use Photoshop to setup gallery wraps too!
  4. PhotoZoom Pro2:  I don’t use this one too much.  When folks bring me a small image that they really want to up-sample….yeah, PhotoZoom Pro2 gets broken out.

There’s the biggies!  If you were to walk into the gallery when I’m in I’ll guarantee that you’ll see Lightroom up on one screen.  You’ll see my web browser, my mail program, and sometimes one of the others listed above open.  But you’ll always see Lightroom up on the screen.

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